


so much for the after party

by arahir



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Divorce, allura is alive of course, post-as much of canon as i care about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 03:18:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17593607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arahir/pseuds/arahir
Summary: Shiro gets his groove back.“We got divorced,” Shiro explains.Two days ago,he doesn’t say. The breakup was months before anyway. “Just me and the cats now.”Keith is still staring at his hand. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “Cats, huh? Wasn’t enough to pilot one?”It startles a laugh out of Shiro. “These are less well behaved.”Keith smiles. “That's hard to believe.”





	so much for the after party

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Ставьте крест на афтепати](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18794506) by [timmy_failure](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timmy_failure/pseuds/timmy_failure)



> title courtesy of me stress reverting to spotify's Country Kind Of Love and zan phaltu (horse girl solidarity ✊)

The divorce papers are filed on Wednesday. Shiro signs them in blue and revels in the lack of hyphen, the simplicity of it, like discovering a favorite sweater in a closet and finding it still fits and age has made it twice as cozy. The house is already sorted, along with both cars. Shiro makes out of it with his hoverbike, both cats, and a favorite houseplant that’s been on the brink of death for the last five years.   
  
His new apartment is one bedroom, close to the Garrison, with a view of the new market. It's loud and a little cramped. After he's finished with the signing and confirmed in triplicate that yes, this is it, there are no more papers, no more left to do, he goes home to his cats and his plant, opens every window in the place and lies on the floor in his underwear for a good three hours while he nurses a personal bottle of cheap champagne. He loves every moment of it.  
  
On Thursday, he wakes up early because his alarm was set by a more ambitious hand. He gets up two hours later because the sheets were a splurge and it would be a shame not to use them to their fullest. When he finally rolls out of bed, it’s at the insistence of both cats and the nagging reminder that he had plans.  
  
At noon, he throws on a leather jacket, hops on the back of his bike, and bee-lines over the desert for the towers of the Garrison. He parks out front and no one tries to stop him when he walks in, though he gets a few whispers. His memory isn’t perfect but Iverson’s office is where he remembers.   
  
“Admiral Shirogane,” the girl gasps. He lost that title the day he retired, but no one will call him anything else. It’s not meant as an insult but it feels like a tease.  
  
“Shiro is fine. Is he in?”  
  
The door opens before she can answer. Iverson walks right up to him, eyes him up and down, and then grabs his prosthetic hand to pull him in for a hug. “You haven’t changed a bit.”  
  
He has a couple new wrinkles, but it’s polite of Iverson to not mention that. “And you look younger,” Shiro laughs as Iverson pulls away to thump him on the shoulder. There’s a question in Iverson’s eyes, but Shiro preempts it. “I was wondering if you have any line staff positions open.”   
  
Iverson frowns. “You know someone who needs a job?”  
  
Shiro half-shrugs and puts on his best chagrin. “Me. If you have anything.”  
  
Iverson staggers in place. Shiro gets the absolute joy of seeing the man shocked first-hand. “Are you joking?”

  
“No,” Shiro laughs.   
  
They don’t let him leave. Iverson has the aid keep him there while he runs off and when he comes back, it’s with what looks like half the Garrison in tow. He pins the medal on his t-shirt and shoves the uniform into his hands—still his, still unique, black on white. He wonders if they still have the red one in storage, too, or if Keith took it when he left. No—he was never that sentimental.   
  
Someone tells Lance and Allura. They arrive an hour into the festivities, their two toddlers in tow, two pale haired and chubby-cheeked girls that Lance spoils rotten—but not more than the rest of the Garrison. The twins are the most well stocked two toddlers on the planet. Coran comes too, and then Pidge and Matt and the rest of the Holts. No one knows how to party like a group of overworked quasi-military-cum-diplomats told there’s free alcohol and a half day off.  
  
Almost everyone is on planet. Hunk will come on Sunday, along with Shay.   
  
Keith will arrive on Monday. No one knows about the divorce yet, though Lance and Matt both notice the absence of the ring and send him a questioning gaze. He shrugs. Curtis quit the Garrison after Shiro did; now he’s off planet doing comms for some private organization Shiro never got the name of.   
  
“You won’t quit on us again,” Iverson asks at the end of the night.   
  
Shiro can’t tell if it’s a question, but shakes his head. “No. This is it for me.”  
  
“Good, good.” He sends Shiro off with a slap to his shoulder, but before Shiro reaches the door, he stops him. “Oh, and Admiral. You might want to—” Iverson motions to his own beard and then shakes his head, “—you know.”  
  


* * *

  
  
On Friday, Shiro cuts his hair.  
  
He leaves the beard.  
  


* * *

  
  
The uniform fits like the day he first wore it. Shiro gives a little hoot when he puts it on and sees himself in the mirror. Both cats stare at him from the bed. The plant, too, from its window perch, still more brown than green, but edging from coffee to a more appetizing olive.   
  
All through breakfast that next Monday he wears it—until he realizes he’s down to a bike for transport and nothing else and white, black, and dust don’t go together so well. He strips the whole thing off and shoves it in a bag to change at the Garrison. Keith’s ship doesn’t touch down until late in the day so he has time.  
He wastes almost all of it fixing and re-fixing his hair in different styles, painfully aware that it’s going to be ruined by that time anyway, and settles on a slicked back look that he can replicate in the wind of a Galra fleet ship touching down.   
  
“You—your hair,” Griffin says dumbly when Shiro steps onto the tarmac later that day, pointing.  
  
Shiro nods and pushes it back off his forehead. “Yes, I my hair. Thank you, James.” Without the bangs hanging in his eyes, he feels as new as the Garrison barber said he would. He looked to be about fourteen and every word out of his mouth made Shiro feel old in the deepest sense, but the hair does look good. He hopes.  
  
Kinkade leans back in his chair to look around Griffin raises his eyebrows. “Looks good, Admiral.” He nods.   
  
“Just Shiro,” he repeats and tries not to touch his hair. “Why do you get a chair?” he starts to ask, but then the ship slips down below the meager cloud cover, sending the high wisps of them spinning away below the hull of it. Not a big ship, but a nice one. Not nicer than Black, but nice. It touches down with a roar and rumble that makes Shiro's hair fly into disarray anyway.  
  
Keith steps out of the ship and the world rights itself. A knot of stress unwinds in his chest and it's such a relief he has to stop himself from the small gasp that wants to punch out of him, but then Keith is close enough to be more than recognizable and Shiro's breath stops entirely.  
  
It must be impractical to have hair that long and be in his line of work. The new outfit makes his shoulders seem wider than they are, but it can't conceal his trim waist or the long arch of his neck. Not pretty, not handsome, but beautiful. He always was. The difference now is that he wears it like he knows.  
  
He turns to say something to the Galra over his shoulder and the flex of his jaw is enrapturing. The line of it, the fall of hair over his pale skin, the point at which the black cloth of the uniform gives way to it.  
  
“Been a while for you, huh man.”  
  
Shiro jumps and turns.  
  
Lance is standing just a foot away. “We saw him, what? Last year? How long has it been for you?”  
  
“Five years.”   
  
Lance makes gusts out a breath. “Oh buddy.”  
  
It’s the one thing he’s not ready for. It’s the one thing he doesn’t expect. Keith walks right to him, right past Lance who shakes his head and puts up his arms and mutters, “Typical.”  
  
Shiro puts out his hand for a friendly shake, but Keith doesn’t take it. He steps in close, wraps both arms around Shiro’s shoulders—even the prosthetic, like it’s not even there, and hugs. He doesn’t say a word.   
  
“Good to have you back,” Shiro says into his hair, overcome.   
  
Keith laughs. “It’s good to be back. What are you doing here?”  
  
Shiro steps away and glances down at his uniform. Keith’s eyes get wide the way Shiro wanted them to, the way he imagined. “New look, huh?”  
  
“You too.”  
  
Keith picks up his hair. “This is the old look. I should cut it. Gets in the way—”  
  
“No! No. It looks good. You look good.” The air between them changes on those words, as if Shiro's cast a spell. Keith steps back, cocks his head, opens his mouth, but before he can speak Acxa taps on his shoulder.  
  
That's their last moment alone for hours.  
  


* * *

  
  
The dinner is perfection. Hunk cooks half and by the fourth course—pastry, filled with sweet and savory, sprinkled in salt, melt-in-your-mouth—Shiro is warm and happy the way he hasn't been in years and every muscle in his body, every bone, is bent toward the man in the chair closest to his.  
  
Keith eats the way he always has, as if he hasn't eaten in years. It flatters Hunk. Shiro has the nonsensical thought that he would buy Keith anything if he wanted it. He would take Keith to dinner until his bank account ran dry if this was the result.  
  
He's talking with Allura about something. She leans across the table. The only two non-Paladins present are her girls and they’re honorary. Keith is showing one of them his dagger while the vein in Lance's forehead starts to stick out. When they come of age, they'll take down the whole place. Shiro would be scared if he weren't so fascinated. He never had occasion to imagine Keith as a parent, but now he wonders where he got the idea he would be the responsible one.   
  
They've all changed out of their uniforms for the dinner. Keith looks good in leather.  
  
Shiro starts to watch him out of the corner of his eye and then gives up the pretense by finding every excuse for small talk he can muster. Keith tells him about Daibazaal and then the Galra, and then, with a smile edged like a knife, about his newest ship. Fighter class, salvage, sleek. Hard to fix up, but maybe with Allura's help he can rework it to something better. Maybe with Shiro's help.  
  
The light in his eyes is new. Fighting the Galra didn’t leave room for it, but it didn’t leave room for much of the best in life. And when it was over, it took time to remember what the best in life was.  
  
“I’d like that,” Shiro says, and finds he means more that if Keith wanted to go right now, Shiro would go with him.   
  
But Keith’s face shutters slowly. “If you can get away. I know you have—other people.”  
  
He’s never mentioned Shiro’s ex-husband. Not even at the wedding. Aside from a bland smile and a congratulations, it was if he wasn’t there at all.  
  
Shiro holds up his hand and turns it over. No ring. The last he saw it, it was sitting on the counter in the house with a copy of the papers Curtis had to sign. Keith frowns so deep that it gives him a wrinkle across his forehead.   
  
“We got divorced,” Shiro explains. _Two days ago,_ he doesn’t say. The breakup was months before anyway. “Just me and the cats now.”  
  
Keith is still staring at his hand. When he speaks, his voice is rough. “Cats, huh? Wasn’t enough to pilot one?”  
  
It startles a laugh out of Shiro. “These are less well behaved.”   
  
Keith smiles. “That's hard to believe.”  
  


* * *

  
  
They meet outside afterward, on the Garrison roof, at the edge of sunset. Given time, Shiro could pick out the spot where Keith saw him off before Kerberos, but that's not what he wants to think about now. Not here. Not with Keith looking so new, so vibrant.  
  
Not with sun on their skin, heat to match the one that’s settled into his gut from the food and company. Alone together for the first time, Shiro has time to admire all the little ways he’s changed. They both have, for the better.   
  
“I’m sorry it’s been so long,” Shiro says, still staring off at the horizon.  
  
Keith doesn’t speak for a moment and when he does, his voice is low. “It’s alright. It’s not like I was around either.” He turns to Shiro, lets the sunset pinks color his skin rose. “I missed you.”   
  
So much from after his time in clone body is mucked up and hazed, but there’s one clear memory he has, of lying at the edge of his own mind in rest, dreaming of Keith while that rough voice echoed around him in real time. You can’t do this to me again. He never worked up the courage to ask how much of it was real, or if all of it was some wish of his broken body and mind near-death.   
  
It doesn’t matter.   
  
Keith is a bit taller than he was, a bit wider with muscle, but still what he was in some essential way. The Galra blood is coming through now in the shape of his nose and the shape of his eyes. Shiro lets himself admit it’s desire and the thought is a dam breaking.   
  
“I missed you, too,” Shiro says honestly, in every way a person can miss another. He misses Keith’s company, misses what they went through together, feels bad for missing a war, and then misses riding through the desert together and knowing there was someone else out there so like him and so much better. Adam called them kindred spirits. He was right.   
  
He was right, and Shiro misses Keith more than he misses Adam—and Keith is standing right in front of him.  
  
Keith kicks his foot against the wall, a little thump to punctuate the moment. “I’m glad it’s over, though.”  
  
“Are you?” It was something to know he was chosen, to know he could summon that much power. It was something else to be trapped inside it for a year. For Keith to be the first person he saw in a year or more, in that place between places. He wanted to kiss Keith in that moment, more than he’d wanted anything since he came to that place, because Keith was so real he could feel the heat off him—could feel heat for the first time.   
  
“Most of the time.”  
  
And now the sun is setting in full. Everything but Keith is dark. Everything but his face and his eyes, and even his hair is writ in fire in that moment.  
  
Shiro wants him. Shiro has wanted him, for years. Never the right moment, never the right choice, never the safe option. That’s over now and he’s tired of pushing it down, of telling himself to be better than that, of settling for something wonderful but not quite what he needed.   
  
He reaches out, sets his hand over Keith’s, and leans into his space—just to breathe him in. To feel that sun-warmth, to have that much life so close, but he’s taller now and when Shiro leans in, his mouth is right there. He’s still smiling, still watching the sunset.   
  
“Keith,” he whispers.  
  
Keith turns to him. His eyes widen and then—he pushes Shiro.   
  
No—he shoves him, both hands at the center of Shiro’s chest. He’s strong. He doesn’t use much force, but it’s enough to send Shiro stumbling a few feet away where he stands in shock, in shame.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Shiro says, scrambling.  
  
Keith is watching him, eyes still wide, like fear. The moment comes so fast and passes faster. Shiro is left in the aftermath of it, trying to collate the hand print at the center of his chest and the shape of Keith’s mouth, which is stuck in a frown now.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Shiro repeats, like a question.  
  
It takes Keith a moment and then he says in a voice like wind scraping on stone: “I'm not a rebound.”

Shiro would be less shocked if Keith had pushed him off the side of the Garrison. “You're not a—what? Where did you hear that?”   
  
“It's been six years, Shiro. I learned what a rebound is.” He closes his eyes, leans so his arms are braced on the ledge, and then scrubs his hand over his face. “I made a few bad decisions. I don't want to be a bad decision.” Shiro tries to reach out again, but Keith pulls back, face lined with an emotion that looks like panic. “Don't. Don't ask me, please.”  
  
“Are you scared of me?” Anger. He's angry—no, he's something else, something intangible, something massive. “Keith,” he pleads. His voice is shaking. “I won’t touch you—I just—” Thought it was something wanted, something mutual. Something they were both stumbling their way toward for years.  
  
He’s not all wrong.   
  
“I don't think I could do it again,” Keith mutters and bows his head. His loose, dark bangs fall across his face like a shadow. “I'm not sure I ever did.”  
  
“Did what?”  
  
“Got over you.”  
  


* * *

  
  
It's not the kind of thing you apologize for. Keith wouldn't appreciate the attempt. He does try though, one more time, but at the same time feels like he’s got a knife lodged below his ribs.   
  
The divorce didn’t feel like this. It felt like a remaking, and admittance that he’d made the right choice, but for someone else’s life. This, though. This is the private, solid agony of an inevitability cut off. Of being so sure he was right and wanted and finding he was—but years too late to make good on it, for both of them.  
  
Shiro finds his way home and lets the drive cool him, let's the open air sap away a little of his hurt. The pain isn't earned. Borrowed, maybe, from Keith, or from himself, from those first days after the war when he was still trying to find his way. It wouldn't have worked with Keith. That’s the one thing he’s sure of, the one balm. It was a bigger reality than he could contend with then, with his head still mostly in two, with his body torn between the blood-thrumming get-up-and-go of the constant fight and an exhaustion so deep he wondered sometimes if he wasn't meant to die after all. If Keith shouldn't have let him go.   
  
But no one piece of it was all of him, and by the end the safe bet was the only bet. It was what Adam would have wanted. All of it, like some graveside promise he never made, to live out the life they were going to.  
  
It wasn't until after the retirement, after the wedding, after the settling down that he remembered he and Adam broke up for a reason, and then it was one long slide.   
  
He tries Iverson but hangs up before it can ring. No one wants to hear about their ex-student-turned-commander's dead-on-arrival romance with another ex-student. Iverson is a stellar drinking buddy, but not for this. Lance and Allura would listen, but he's been over before and knows that by ten on a given week night, they’re both passed out under a pile of toddler, stuffed animals, and storybooks. The cadets are still up, but the concept of trying to talk to those four about this topic almost makes give up the ordeal entirely.   
  
Matt’s the last number he tries. He picks up after two rings, the sound of conversation filtering through the line. “Are you at a bar?” Shiro asks.   
  
“Hello. Yes. This is Matt. Is this Shiro?”   
  
“Where are you?”  
  
“The bar in the market. Please tell me this isn’t a booty call.”  
  
Shiro almost hangs up, but holds on to the phone by pure will. “Which bar in the market?”  
  
Matt hums. “The one with the Christmas lights?”  
  
They’re not Christmas lights, they’re traditional Puigian decor, but they do look like Christmas lights. They might actually be re-purposed tree lights, but that’s not the point. “I’ll be there in five,” Shiro replies.   
  
He hangs up to the sound of Matt yelling, “Wait, wait, wait—”  
  


* * *

  
  
The bar is a walk rather than a drive from his new apartment, which is good, because Shiro intends to get wrecked the way they did his first year at the Garrison, when they had more than one day off at a time. Matt gives him a half-hearted wave when he walks on and pats the stool next to him at the bar. The entire place is remade from the wreckage of the war and what the Galra left standing. A few steel beams stick out on the ceiling and there’s rebar twisting out of the walls that someone has strung lights around.   
  
It looks the way Shiro feels—reconstituted, remade, all his pieces broken down and put back together to fit in this new world. Still not enough to cover up what came before.  
  
“What are you drinking?” Shiro asks when he sits down.   
  
Matt rolls his shoulder. “Strongest thing they had.”  
  
“That bad?”  
  
“First week training the new cadets.”   
  
Shiro orders the same and clinks glasses, tries to down it in one swallow and regrets the attempt right away, coughing. Matt thumps him on the shoulder. “What brings you out on this fine night?”  
  
“Keith.” No point lying. He’s realized, everyone else knows already. He wasn’t subtle. Neither was Keith. Late nights in the observation room, Keith begging him back from death once and twice, even that first morning back on Earth. No one else came outside that morning. No one came outside the night before. Those moments were always theirs.   
  
True to form, Matt only nods and then hails the bartender for another round.  
  
“Did he ask you for your hand?” Matt jokes.  
  
“...The opposite.”  
  
Matt turns to him and frowns. “What’s that mean?”  
  
“I asked him—out. He said no.”  
  
His eyebrows rise below his terrible bangs. “He—wait. He rejected you?  _You_?”  
  
Shiro sneers at him and waits for the refill. It doesn’t help to talk about. This was a mistake, but now he’s here, he’s dedicated to drinking as much as possible to feel better. It’s not working yet; maybe he’s gained weight in his off time, after all.   
  
“I guess I get it,” Matt says after a moment, turning back to the bar. “I mean, he tried to die for you.”   
Shiro almost drops his drink.   
  
“Do you remember that ambush? You guys got holed up on Naxzela. Haggar had that ship and we couldn't get through the barrier. Keith was going to ram it with a Galra bird. I don't think it would have dented it.”   
  
“What are you talking about?”  
  
Matt takes a deep and audible breath. “He stole a Galra bird, radioed you guys, figured out what was going on. He figured getting to Haggar was the only option, I guess. Coran and I—we couldn’t stop him. He rammed the shield. Or tried.”  
  
Shiro wants to repeat, What? but words won’t come. He wanted to drink, wanted to forget, not this—not this terror. “How?” he asks instead, not sure what he’s asking.  
  
“Lotor. Just in the nick of time.” He sing-songs the phrase. At least the alcohol is working one of them. “I'm just saying, I get it. That's a lot to put on one person. Hell, it would scare me if I was either of you.”  
“I’m not asking him to die for me.”  
  
“I don't think it works that way.”  
  
“But the war is over—”  
  
“Yeah, but think about it. I mean I could say don't hurt him, but I could say that to him, too. What if things just don't work out? What if you both get hurt? I know you think you can handle it, but can you? Can Keith? That's why no one said anything—after.” He puts down his drink and the festive lights above the bar color the liquid green and red in halos. It’s too sweet. Shiro wishes he'd ordered straight whisky. “You two are great together, but if you're not… The collateral damage probably could have taken down the whole Garrison.” He laughs, downs the rest of his drink.  
  
It hurts in the most personal way, but only because he's right. Then, they could have. He can imagine his own hurt, his own anger, his guilt at ruining a friendship and a relationship in one go—though it wouldn't have been his fault more than Keith’s. Likewise, Keith would have blamed himself in full.  
  
He can see it in his mind—Keith running off to space for years at a time, Shiro trying to make good on every promise he thought he made to himself, to the dead, to the universe. As far as visions go, it hits a little close to home. No—it hits dead on. That’s what they were, that’s where they are, and without even the attempt at something else first.   
  
And, just like that, he realizes: it can’t be worse than this. They might make the same mistakes again, but they’re older now. Stronger, wiser. Just like that, it flips in his mind. If there are a hundred ways for it go wrong, there are at least a dozen for it go right. A dozen ways they can have some part of each other and be happy.  
  
Keith is it. He's the last good thing Shiro wants out of life. Even if it's never anything more than the occasional ride and a beer after. It can be that. It's enough.   
  


* * *

  
  
He takes the long way back, winding around the new streets and through the night market to grab a bite to eat, and saves the leftovers for the cats. Possibilities are thrumming through him like a little fire in his chest, chasing out the pain from the rooftop. He’ll give it a day or two and talk to Keith, let them meet on equal footing. If he never wants to give Shiro anything, he can contend with that, too. He has a life now with the Garrison. This can work.  
  
But when he gets back to the apartment, he’s not the first one that’s been there.   
There's a note. Someone’s slipped it between the frame and the door. Shiro steps on it as he's walking in, feels the crumple of paper under his foot.   
  
_I'm sorry. I want to talk. Call me._  
  
It's signed with a  _K_  and then a smaller  _eith_  scrawled messily at the bottom, as if Shiro wouldn’t know his handwriting by heart.  
  
He can't be far gone. Shiro fumbles for his phone, stepping out on the balcony as he dials because the apartment is too small to hold every thought banging through his head. He wants to talk. Why is he sorry? Does he want to cut Shiro off? Maybe it was a step too far. Knowing Keith, he could have left the note ten minutes ago and already be off planet.  
  
The number connects. The ring sounds and then Shiro thinks for a moment he’s had too much to drink because he can hear it in both ears, but then he leans over the rail of the balcony and there's Keith, lit up against the dark in a little halo of blue light from his phone.  
  
“Hey,” Shiro says. The phone is still at his ear.  
  
Keith stares up at him and then back to the phone before he brings it to his ear. “Hey.  
  
“Do you want to come back up?”  
  
“Yeah. Be right there.”  
  
Shiro can’t put down the phone. That connection feels like a thread that will snap if he lets it. He won’t. Never again. “Are you okay?”   
  
Keith doesn’t answer for a moment, but Shiro can hear him breathing as he walks. “No,” he says finally. “I just—I’ll say it in person.”  
  
“Okay. Where’s Kosmo?”  
  
“Babysitting the twins tonight.”  
  
Shiro laughs. “They’ll love that.” He can still hear Keith walking, hear his hair brush the phone. It’s a warm quiet. The knock on the door jars him; he has to move to the door to open it, try not to trip over anything on the way.   
  
Once it’s open, they stare at each other. Keith looks a little wrecked, how Shiro feels four times over, and then Keith bows his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Any of it.”  
  
“...Wait, wait.” Shiro puts up his hand. “Why are you apologizing? I came on to you—”  
  
“Because it’s not your fault. None of this is. I shouldn’t have left, I shouldn’t have pushed you—”  
  
Shiro steps back. This isn’t a conversation they can have in a hallway. He still doesn’t have chairs, but Keith steps in after him. Once the door is closed, Shiro turns to him. “Yes, you should have. You did nothing wrong.”  
  
Keith looks at him, desperate, frustrated—emotions Shiro knows by heart on his face, but doesn’t know how to soothe right now. “It’s just…” He pushes his hands through his hair. “I panicked. I had a crush on you back then. It was stupid.”  
  
Shiro musters himself and every bit of courage he’s ever had. “It wasn’t a crush,” he says softly. “And it wasn’t stupid.” This is like navigating through an asteroid field and of the two of them, he was never the better at that. “I think I knew, deep down,” he says before Keith can argue, “but I wasn’t ready for it.”  
  
Keith stares at him, dead on. “Neither was I.”  
  
Shiro breathes. He forces it past his lips and into his chest, makes himself take that moment. “I—we split up six months ago. Keith, you’re not a rebound. It doesn't have to be anything you don't want it to be.”  
  
The marriage was the rebound, Shiro doesn’t say. It was the panic move, the safe option, and he was a good man, but he wasn’t it.   
  
“I think… I think I'm still scared,” Keith whispers, as if reading Shiro’s mind back to him His voice is so rough. He always sounds like he’s been yelling, but he never does. “I really don’t want to mess this up.”  
  
It might be too bold, but Shiro takes his hand. He rubs his thumb over Keith’s palm.  _That makes two of us._ There are no right words. There’s nothing he can say to get them from point A to B and this isn’t a battle—he can’t help Keith summon strength, use a Lion, teleport them to some time when this is worked out for them, for better or worse.  
  
“It’s late,” he says instead. “Stay.”  
  
Keith stares at him for a long moment where Shiro tries not to pray and then nods. “Okay.”   
  
Shiro gives him the leftovers and sends a wordless apology to the cats. Keith eats while they make small talk, feeding little bits to the two sharks circling the bottom of his chair. Shiro wonders if Kosmo could cow them and then hopes he gets to see one day.   
  
He gives Keith a spare shirt for bed and sends a silent thank you to his past life for going with the king bed. They both need the distance. They’re both big and Keith is still close enough to touch but Shiro doesn’t. They make small talk about Krolia and Daibazaal, about Kosmo and about the twins, about Shiro’s cats and Iverson and everyone else.   
  
Right at the edge of sleep, Keith moves closer. “Would you let me take you somewhere sometime?”  
  
Shiro blinks in the dark. “I haven’t been off Earth in three years. I’d pay you,” he says and laughs.  
  
Keith sets a hand at the center of his back and huffs. “You don’t have to. I have a few ships now—”  
  
“Oh, a few? A man to keep me in space travel. If only I’d known. I would have asked you years ago.”  
  
For a moment he thinks he’s gone too far, but then Keith laughs and this time it’s loud enough that he tries to muffle it in the sheets. “Okay, old man.”  
  


* * *

  
  
In the morning he wakes up with his limbs tangled with someone else’s, for the first time in months if not a year or more. Keith, still. He’s been awake because he’s watching Shiro and his eyes aren’t sleep hazed the way Shiro’s are. Shiro wonders why he hasn’t moved, but then he feels the telltale weight of two cat-sized lumps nestled between them over the sheets.  
  
“Do you have to leave soon?” Shiro asks and reaches out, fingers parting Keith’s hair to show his eyes to best effect. If it’s too intimate, Keith doesn’t show it. He shakes his head.  
  
“No. I think I should stick around for a while.” He stretches and yawns. “At least until I can convince someone to help me fix up that bird… Maybe copilot part time if he doesn’t mind.”  
  
Shiro’s leaves his hand there, against Keith’s cheek. “Sounds like a plan.”  
  
“Anyway, I want to show the girls a few tricks that’ll keep Lance on his toes.” Knowing Keith, he means with a knife, or how to kick. Counting on his good teaching and their newfound ability to run more than walk, he’s got a blank slate to work with.   
  
Shiro makes himself pull away and then stretches before he drags himself out of bed and toward the bathroom. “I knew you’d get Lance back one day, but this is devious. I’m surprised.” Keith laughs again. “There’s food in the kitchen, but if you can wait, I’ll try to make an omelette for you. You can laugh. I won’t mind.”   
  
Keith doesn’t reply and Shiro doesn’t want to look back, to see if he’s over-reached with the offer. Keith being there when he woke up was enough of a surprise; if he’s gone before Shiro gets out, it won’t be.  
  
“Wait—”   
  
When Shiro turns back, Keith is sitting up, sheets pooled in his lap. “Are you taking a shower?”  
  
“Yeah. Did you want to go first?”  
  
“...Is there room for two?”  
  
There is. The bathroom was the biggest selling point—a walk in rain shower that doubles as a sauna if you close the door. Shiro can’t make himself talk, his voice stuck with his heart in his throat, so he nods and tries to eek out a rough, “Sure.”  
  
Keith follows him into the bathroom, Shiro’s senses hyper-aware of every move he makes and the sound of his borrowed clothes dropping to the floor as he gets the spray going. Maybe it’s a test. No. He discards the idea as soon as it enters his head. Keith isn’t so cunning, isn’t so cruel. He wants to be close and he doesn’t know how to do that right now without risking more of himself than he’s ready to give.  
  
He thinks of the imagined men and women Keith’s dated, wonders if he’s been hurt and how much, but it doesn’t matter. None of it does.  
  
Shiro strips and climbs in the shower first. Keith follows with soft steps, and they take turns under the spray, soaping up in between. He tries not to look, but it’s unavoidable, and Keith is muscled and scarred, still lithe like a dancer.   
  
“This isn't as weird as I thought it would be,” he laughs.  
  
He's right. And Shiro hasn’t heard him laugh so much in more than their five years apart.  
  
Keith washes his hair for him, and his back, and Shiro returns the favor—gets half-hard as he runs shampoo and then conditioner through Keith’s long hair. It’s new again to touch another body, and one he wants, but it doesn’t come to anything. It’s a relief, just to be close. After, Shiro grabs a clean towel for him and they dry and dress. Keith wears the shirt he slept in while Shiro busies himself making breakfast. It’s not as big as it would have been on him before, but big enough to make Shiro grin and think of teasing.  
  
The omelettes are only a bit burnt. Keith doesn’t mention it. He eats every bite.   
  
They don’t have any plans for the day and it becomes a lazy, meandering thing. They go to the market and look around together. Keith picks up a part he needs a kiosk that shouldn’t be selling parts to Galra anything—the owner recognizes Shiro over Keith’s shoulder and decides to give Keith a twenty percent discount—and then he buys Shiro something fried and disgusting and perfect. After, they head to the Garrison and Shiro re-introduces Keith to the MFEs and then to the cadet class, who stare at him with wide eyes.   
  
Shiro tries to feel like he’s not showing Keith off, but the feeling still settles into his bones and stays there all day.   
  
That evening, they go riding. Not for pleasure so much as sport. Shiro is rusty and Keith doesn’t go easy on him, so Shiro spends most of the day eating his dust in literal terms.  
  
When Keith jumps the edge of the cliff, the thrill of it is different. It’s his own move thrown back at him, but done better, a thing of beauty. Shiro follows him and whoops even though it lands him a mouthful off dirt, and then races him to the cliffside Keith pulls up on. It’s not the same one they used to stop at. The Galra, the Atlas, the Lions and their fall—all of it changed the architecture of their old stomping grounds to unrecognizability, but the vista is just as good. When Keith pulls off his goggles, it leaves raccoon rings of dirt around his eyes. Shiro knows he looks twice as ridiculous.   
  
Keith doesn’t laugh at him. When Shiro walks over, his eyes are focused on Shiro’s jaw. Shiro wipes away the bead of sweat that he can feel rolling down his neck there. His hand comes away muddy. “I’m a mess,” he says and tries to tamp the words down so they don’t sound gleeful.  
  
Now Keith is staring at his mouth.  
  
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, as if he might be refused.  
  
Anxiety rises in Shiro and then wisps away as fast as it came. “Of course.” Shiro watches as Keith steps into his space, into his arms, which are open as they always will be for Keith, and then there are lips on his and the barest scrape of teeth. It tastes like salt and grit.   
  
It’s messy, but so are they, in more ways than one. It’s good, like desert dust on a bike, or sweat after a fight—like eating something that melts in hand. Messy, but how messy is when messy is half the point.   
“Is this too fast?” Keith asks when he pulls back, his lips wet and red, his eyes dark.   
  
Shiro lets himself laugh, finally, so surprised and loud that it echoes off the rock around them and into the distance, and says, “It’s whatever we want it to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [tumblr](http://arahir.tumblr.com/), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/arahir), and [twitter](https://twitter.com/arahir) where I sometimes post fic (like this one) for followers when I'm too lazy/busy to post to ao3! 
> 
> Just a heads up but I'm in class from about eight to eight every day and I still want to update at a regular pace so I'll probably be posting more fic on twitter and slower to respond to comments. Also MDZS ate my soul. Also I can't play Kingdom Hearts III but I can watch every playthrough


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